[Sca-cooks] Charlemagne and the doctors

[Antonia Calvo]

otsisto wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>   
>> "His health was good until four years before he died, when he suffered
>>     
> from constant fevers.  Toward the very end he also became lame in one foot.
> Even then he trusted his own judgment rather than the advice of his
> physicians, whom he almost loathed, since they urged him to stop eating
> roast meat, which he liked, and to start eating boiled meat."
>   
>> Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, chapter 22.
>>
>>     
> Yes- that's the quote that got me started on the whole thing of
> wondering why his doctors insisted on boiled meats. (As it turns out, no
> one tells the emperor what to do!) Have a brand-new copy of Anthimus
> that I'm starting in on. Might get some illumination there. :-)
>
> 'Lainie>>>>
>
> Though I don't know if the physicians would have know exactly but could it
> have been the carcinogens that roasted tends to have. Perhaps they had
> associated the condition to the roasted meat.
>   

That sounds *wildly* unlikely.  We know that roasted meats were 
considered "hotter" than boiled meats, and fevers are a disorder of 
excessive heat, so recommending boiled meats over roasted would have 
been a no-brainer for an early medieval physician.

-- 
Antonia di Benedetto Calvo

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Habeo metrum - musicamque,
hominem meam. Expectat alium quid?
-Georgeus Gershwinus
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